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Interstingly, this "I think therefor I am" has been taken as the most barebone possible way to demonstrate what exist and what does not. However, each word of t

Interstingly, this "I think therefor I am" has been taken as the most barebone possible way to demonstrate what exist and what does not. However, each word of the sentence makes an assumption that it never tries to demonstrate: - "I": assumes individuality and that the mind is a local phenomenon. - "think": assumes cognition and that it's a process of the mind. - "therefor": assumes causality. - "am": assumes there is such a thing as existence at our level. Those are postulates, not demonstrated facts. It's perfectly ok to have those, as long as you declare them as such. However, when you study Descartes, teachers never do so. It's disappointing when the whole point is to teach people to "doubt everything". There are other philosophies that doubt those postulates. Some assume we are not individuals, but focal points on a collective conscientiousness. Some believe thinking is actually not a creative process, but merely the act of receiving information from another source. Some think we live in a deterministic world, and causality is an illusion our mind uses to make sense of things. Some will say we are not, existence is the symptom of a greater activity like a shadow. In the end, even something as simple as "cogito ergo sum" can be dissembled to the extreme and debated. Which is why I enjoy philosophy less and less. It's a never ending source of questions, with very little useful answers for day to day life. It's not practical at all, and my most philosophical friends are also among the most unhappy. Even antiquity philosophers, despite dispensing practical advises on how to live your life, fall into the trap on not giving any applicable way of reaching their standards. It's like saying "quit" to a smoker or "eat less" to an obese. True. Practical. Not gonna help.

pasabagi 8y ago
>Descartes, teachers never do so. When I was taught Descartes, the flimsiness of the whole 'cogito' thing was really emphasised. I actually don't think I've ever heard of anybody in the philosophy world who took the binding between personal existence and thought as any kind of raw fact, at least not in the terms Descartes proposed. Most of the treatments I (vaguely) remember were about the interesting observation, implicit in the Meditations, that there's something unusual about existential predicates. I think if you stop thinking of philosophy as a body of answers, and more as a body of in-depth examinations of questions, then it gets good again. It's a bit like maths - nobody would ever suggest that the concept of a Heesh number is an answer to a particular kind of question. It's more an interesting way to talk about tiling.
- Nav_Panel 8y ago
  > I think if you stop thinking of philosophy as a body of answers, and more as a body of in-depth examinations of questions, then it gets good again. Agreed. I like to frame it as such: the "point" of philosophy is a form of play, rather than a quasi-theology.
ElFitz 8y ago
Except it's "Cogito ergo sum", not "I think therefore I am" "I" here is whatever is the origin of these thoughts, and nothing more. Not you. He explained it as "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt" So no, there is no postulate, just observation. However far the doubt goes... well, there is still something doubting, and thus thinking (doubts are thoughts), that has to be. Otherwise there would be no doubt. That's all. Wether it's an individual human's mind or the self-deceiving / self-ignorant projection of a 6 dimensional octopus, wether thinking really is an independent creative process or just the deterministic result of outside events doesn't matter.
- sametmax 8y ago
  "Cogito" implies "I", it's just not required in latin. Espacially since it's been first coined by Gómez Pereira (not Descartes), a spanish man, language in which you can say "pienso" and not provide any "I".
  - ElFitz 8y ago
    Pereira's appears to be "quidquid noscit, est, ergo ego sum", but maybe I'm wrong

pasabagi 8y ago

>Descartes, teachers never do so. When I was taught Descartes, the flimsiness of the whole 'cogito' thing was really emphasised. I actually don't think I've ever heard of anybody in the philosophy world who took the binding between personal existence and thought as any kind of raw fact, at least not in the terms Descartes proposed. Most of the treatments I (vaguely) remember were about the interesting observation, implicit in the Meditations, that there's something unusual about existential predicates. I think if you stop thinking of philosophy as a body of answers, and more as a body of in-depth examinations of questions, then it gets good again. It's a bit like maths - nobody would ever suggest that the concept of a Heesh number is an answer to a particular kind of question. It's more an interesting way to talk about tiling.

Nav_Panel 8y ago
> I think if you stop thinking of philosophy as a body of answers, and more as a body of in-depth examinations of questions, then it gets good again. Agreed. I like to frame it as such: the "point" of philosophy is a form of play, rather than a quasi-theology.

ElFitz 8y ago

Except it's "Cogito ergo sum", not "I think therefore I am" "I" here is whatever is the origin of these thoughts, and nothing more. Not you. He explained it as "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt" So no, there is no postulate, just observation. However far the doubt goes... well, there is still something doubting, and thus thinking (doubts are thoughts), that has to be. Otherwise there would be no doubt. That's all. Wether it's an individual human's mind or the self-deceiving / self-ignorant projection of a 6 dimensional octopus, wether thinking really is an independent creative process or just the deterministic result of outside events doesn't matter.

sametmax 8y ago
"Cogito" implies "I", it's just not required in latin. Espacially since it's been first coined by Gómez Pereira (not Descartes), a spanish man, language in which you can say "pienso" and not provide any "I".
- ElFitz 8y ago
  Pereira's appears to be "quidquid noscit, est, ergo ego sum", but maybe I'm wrong